Forever (is a limited time offer)
by The Readers Muse
Summary: "I'm not pretending. You were. I know. I can hear them… They just want me to change. They can make me be like them. Maybe I should change. I can make you all understand."
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** I don't own AMC's The Walking Dead or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside.

**Authors Note #1:** Because it has been a while since I have attempted to purposely ruin everyone's feelings, okay?

**Warnings:** *Contains: adult language, adult content, character death, canon appropriate violence, blood, guts and gore, angst, season five spoilers, reference to the usual emotional trauma and unexpected bonding along the way.

**Forever (is a limited time offer)**

_**Chapter One**_

"_I'm not pretending. You were. I know. I can hear them… They just want me to change. They can make me be like them. Maybe I should change. I can make you all understand."_

* * *

><p>Washington had gone sour.<p>

It hadn't been what they'd been promised.

Something had turned it sick – rotting from the inside out – bedrock deep, maybe further.

Even the wind had tasted bitter, dank with mildew and mold. It was bad enough to make even Daryl turn skittish – bleeding misplacement and uncertainty as the crumbling blacktop refused to give underneath his worn soles. Squinting suspiciously around every corner as the looming buildings set the atmosphere dark regardless if it was night or day.

They'd all noticed it.

Even Judith – growing sulky and muted as their lonely caravan pushed forward.

The streets leading to D.C were hard and unkind and it'd only gotten worse when they reached the city limits.

* * *

><p>They'd lost Tyreese long before they hit the state line.<p>

She kept trying to tell herself that it was a blessing in disguise.

That any of them would have been lucky to go out like that – quick, clean, easy.

No one said it though.

Not to Sasha.

Not to each other.

Choosing to keep their own council as she'd cradled him close, silent tears streaming down her cheeks – too far gone to do anything else. And like shadows carving channels out of living stone, everything else was unspoken. Come morning they would grieve and move on. Bowed but not broken. Not yet.

And why not?

There had still been a purpose then.

_A reason to keep going._

* * *

><p>She'd never been to Washington. In fact, she'd never been out of Georgia proper. Ed had seen to that. And in hindsight, it seemed like he'd done her a favor because she'd hated every minute of it.<p>

The chill had been bone deep - pervasive and gross - like nature had hit pause on the wrong end of a season. She told herself, at least at first, that she was just biased. That it was all but ingrained after years on the run – something that left her with a distaste for the unfamiliar, the unknown and unexplored. It made sense, after all, you stuck with what you knew – _where you knew. _

She realized pretty damn quick that it wasn't her.

It was this place, this city, this-

And the people, _god_, the people had been-

But she supposed that hadn't been anyone's fault. Least of all Eugene's.

Because he'd been telling the truth. Everything he'd said, impossible as it'd been to believe, all of it had been true. Every sullied second of it. From the pass-code he'd punched in on the side door of a nondescript building a few blocks from the docks, all muted concrete-grey and still smelling faintly of fish. To the handprints painted – thick and dribbling across bullet proof glass - there had been no question then, not even from Daryl, that Eugene Porter wasn't exactly who he said he was.

_Their best chance._

_Their best hope._

_Maybe their only hope._

The truth of it had been written across his face as they'd dragged out the bodies, clearing a space in the control room as he'd cursed and sweated, flicking at unlit switches and mumbling about generators and operational capacity before taking off down one of the side halls. Almost giving Abraham an aneurysm before they caught up with him in a fish-bowl office, flushed with pride and grinning like a manic as he held a key card tight in his fist.

That was when she understood.

He was in his element here.

In all the ways he didn't fit outside, in the wild, _this_ was where he belonged. Surrounded by humming computers and sterile whites. He found his niche in numbers, in playing the odds. In this place he owned every inch in himself, he _was _every inch of himself.

Meanwhile, she felt muted. The cavernous spaces and limp lab coats that still hung beside office doors reminded her so much of the CDC that she felt a shiver of claustrophobia creep down her spine. And she hadn't been alone. Daryl had paced, hands running through that long brown hair she was just _itching _to take her scissors to.

_Try not to think about it._

_That was what Jenner had said, wasn't it?_

* * *

><p>The parallel between them - between Eugene and herself - wasn't lost on her.<p>

But neither was it welcome.

She'd come too damn far to devolve.

To take a two steps back instead of three steps forward.

So she didn't.

And despite the nervousness crawling underneath her skin every second they stayed put, she chalked it up to a win and moved on. Unwilling to look back too long lest she make herself out to be a liar.

* * *

><p>There had only been a few hours to look around before Eugene crowded them out the door, muttering about the basement and an alternate power supply. But she saw enough to put the rest of the puzzle together.<p>

_Something had gone wrong down here. _

_Something that shouldn't have happened._

_Something they hadn't anticipated._

She'd taken the time to dwell on the little things. Like the bloody smears and dented doors, automatic locks that'd been bolted down. Faulty wiring, Eugene had whispered, cut corners and under budget – trapping the people who'd worked here inside, air-tight and strangling.

She registered the dusty pictures on his desk, an older man with his face - his father maybe – sitting like still life on the far corner. Things like the broken glass underneath the empty case labeled 'fire axe' and the jagged gouges that'd been hacked out of the wall by the main doors. The way the control panel beside it had been pulled apart and re-wired, frozen in place just a few inches shy of a finger-length wide.

_They'd almost made it._

* * *

><p><span><strong>AN #2:** Thank you for reading. Reviews and constructive critiquing are love! – There will be more to come! Stay tuned.

**Reference: **Big thank you to gunslingerdixon for the help collecting the Lizzie quotes from season four for use in this chapter.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** I don't own AMC's The Walking Dead or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside.

**Authors Note #1:** Because it has been a while since I have attempted to purposely ruin everyone's feelings, okay?

**Warnings:** *Contains: adult language, adult content, character death (as in plural, people), angst, season five spoilers, reference to the usual emotional trauma, angst, and unexpected bonding along the way. Now considered AU in terms of canon story line.

**Forever (is a limited time offer)**

_**Chapter Two**_

_"I believe with a little tweakin' on the terminals in DC we can flip the script, take out every last dead one of them; fire with fire."_

* * *

><p>He told them things, as they clattered down the stairs to the sub-basement. Things he hadn't known how to tell them before. Things he hadn't known for sure until he'd examined the print-outs and equations strewn across bloody whiteboards and wind-swept conference rooms. Things he probably wasn't even supposed to know considering that he told them upfront, tripping over his words as he used someone else's key-card to unlock the door. He'd only been a technical advisor to the main team. A new hire, been on the job six months, tops.<p>

He told them, trembling and over excited, that it'd been_ their_ fault.

Their own government.

_They'd started all this. _

It wasn't natural, how could it be?

It had been something the military had cooked up. Experimental viral warfare filed under the "just in case" and "in order to cure, you must first understand" mode of scientific reasoning. And just like you might expect, the worst case scenario had become their new reality.

He'd been at a conference. Something about disease inhibitors and some new protective platelet shielding, when Wildfire had claimed its first victim. Patient zero. Even Eugene's people didn't know who that was. No one did. If it'd even been a person in the first place.

The answer to that question was like trying to catch the wind. No one knew if patient zero had contracted it and turned, or if the virus had infected everyone quietly - city to city, state to state, country to country - only to explode out into the open when people died of unrelated causes. Spreading like its namesake as more and more people turned and killed others.

Where it started was anyone's best guess – Eugene's people had pinned it down to somewhere on the east coast, but even then that was reaching. It had travelled through the air, the water, e_verywhere. _

Saturating.

Smothering.

_Sick._

* * *

><p>He told them how his people had gone underground, like protocol dictated. Remaining in contact with the CDC and military intermediaries as they approached the disease from the opposite angle. It had been a calculated move. Meant to hedge their bets and increase their chances of <em>someone<em> coming up with _something_ as the world tore itself apart above them.

But there had been a problem with the power.

Something they hadn't been able to fix.

Something they'd needed him for.

Only he hadn't been there.

* * *

><p>"<em>I'm not sure exactly what happened here, but they truly messed up the connectors on the emergency generator. It's going to take me the better part of half a week to figure this out. Replace the shorted out cables, re-code the corrupted files. Phil should have known better than to mix up those wires. I told him before I left - hell, why Tasha even let him near her tool box is completely beyond me. She was my boss, you know. Crazy as all get out, never knew where anything was – the 'lose her head if it wasn't attached' sort of person - but a certifiable genius when it came to working on the bugs in a new system. She tried to call me, I mean, I think she did. I never got around to putting her number in my cell, but this was my system, I coded in the safe-guards – government counter terrorism measures and junk – I told her before I left that the specs were in her inbox. She just had to print them out and getting access to this generator would've been a piece of-"<em>

Eugene talked until words failed, working it out for himself in real time.

He'd been distracted, green code flashing across the dusty screen of the laptop he'd pulled out of an emergency kit in main storage. Chattering on in a way they'd all come to recognize was more for the sake of filling the silence before cutting off in mid word.

The way something in the back of his eyes just _broke _when he stilled – mid-whirl – in his chair had been difficult to watch. The way he'd trailed off, ending his sentence with a hyphen rather than a period as his fingers stilled on the keys, the faint lines around his mouth twitching like a house of cards five seconds from falling.

The way Abraham's hand eventually came to rest on his shoulder only made it real.

_Worse._

Eugene didn't say much of anything after that.

Not for days.

* * *

><p>They all passed the time differently as the changing days flashed, day-glow red, across the wall of the control room. The clock was smalle than the one in the CDC, showing the date and time rather than a countdown. But strangely, even that was no less ominous.<p>

Rick healed.

Tara slept.

Carl found a couple best sellers in the back of someone's desk.

Glenn slept.

Judith soaked up all her well-deserved attention with unfailing good grace, charming everyone who even so much as looked her way into carrying her about. Shushing her fussing as the low flicker of the emergency lights painted the underground facility in sickly burnt orange.

Maggie slept.

Daryl paced and made a nest in one of the supply closets. Hiding himself away whenever he figured he could get away with it, but always leaving room for two when she inevitably followed him back there.

Michonne skunked half of them in chess.

Sasha mourned.

Father Gabriel prayed.

Rosita and Abraham got in Eugene's way, hovering and over concerned, like a pair of ducks brooding over their last surviving chick. Only Eugene was too distracted to either notice or appreciate the mothering.

No one said much.

And when they did, it was muted – heavy.

Frankly, she was getting tired of the trend.

It seemed like all the silences these days had a weight to them.

Her soul didn't need the extra weight.

None of them did.

* * *

><p>There had been something in his face they should have recognized - should have caught before it was too late as Eugene stared at the same computer readouts over and over, muttering darkly about radiation and specific target calculations. Eyes <em>flick-flicking<em> across tumbling binary code as the confident look dissolved, cycling through half a dozen different emotions – from determination, anger, disbelief and finally, acceptance - as the world, presumably, kept on turning above them.

* * *

><p>"Trust me, I'm smarter than you," he whispered, pressing a hand against the glass, his grubby palm almost dwarfed by Abraham's clenched fist as the man beat on the glass – yelling. Rosita and Tara jockeyed for place behind him, trying to be heard above the din as mis-matched phrases of: "Eugene, what are you doing?!" and "we can find another way, there has to be-," floated through the thin recycled air.<p>

They should have known when he'd explained what he was going to do that morning over MRE's of hot cereal and powdered eggs. As his hand had trembled every time he'd tried to pick up his cup of coffee, vibrating with nerves and misplaced righteousness – or so they'd thought.

He stuffed a handful of papers into her arms before he darted into the control room and locked the door, expression crippling and pale as Abraham yelled and threw his shoulder into the edge the second after the dead-bolt slid home.

"It isn't the power supply," Eugene murmured, pressing his head against the bulletproof glass, words muffled and heavy before the line of his shoulders firmed and he met their eyes through the dusty glass square. "Not really. You wouldn't understand. It's the main computer that was damaged. If I had the parts, maybe, a complete re-haul of the system. But even I can't make this work from scratch."

Rick, Daryl and Carl disappeared down a side hall, yelling about a tool kit and the furnace room. Something to take the hinges off.

But Eugene just shook his head.

"This is the only way, someone has to be here to press the switch. It can't be triggered remotely. But the trade-off is, that when I do it, when I release the compound, the juice it needs – the way the system was damaged - will trigger a total melt down. Toxic gas, vapors, the whole damn package. We only get one shot at this, but you can't be in here. Promise me you won't- don't try."

The sound of unsteady boot-soles retreating across smooth-brushed concrete was almost enough to drown out the rest. Like the way his voice cracked when he said goodbye, baritone and oddly pitched as tears welled up in the back of her eyes.

"This is the way it has to be. …Seems like a small price to pay, considering."

* * *

><p>She didn't stay for the coughing.<p>

For the thick black smoke he saved them from.

She didn't stay for the tears.

Or the flickering lights as Eugene flipped the switch and sent his solution into the air.

She didn't stay for any of it.

Instead, she went right to the nest.

To the smell of her and Daryl intermingled across the blankets and sheets and buried herself in them. Drowning it out, just this once, as the echoes of the other's grief did remarkably little to soften the bright-bulb sting of sterile whites and unforgiving concrete as the entire complex shuddered and groaned around them.

* * *

><p>It was only later that she spread them out, all the papers Eugene had thrown at her.<p>

Some of it she understood.

Most she didn't.

But it was enough.

She kept it close to her chest as a day passed, then two. Until the vents in the control room slowly sifted through the poisonous air – replacing it with the stale outside - and the deadbolt clicked open. Until Abraham was able to go in with a mask and put the thing that'd taken Eugene's place out of its misery.

They'd all lost too much.

Too _many _getting here.

There hadn't been any other choice but to believe.

Believe it would work.

Believe that it was over.

_Believe they finally had a chance._

Her lip curled as she examined the print outs, watching out of the corner of her eye as Carl laughed, tickling Judith's soft little belly as the others looked on, indulgent and warm. Hell if she was going to take that hope from them until she absolutely had to. Until the equations scribbled across the page – ink smudged chicken-scratch Eugene probably never thought he'd need again – proved her wrong.

* * *

><p>She didn't get involved when the others waited out the exact span of days Eugene had told them to before going topside. She wasn't there when they popped the hatch and peered out into the murky dawn.<p>

She wasn't there for the silence.

The confusion.

For when they started questioning.

_Why?_

_Why?_

_Why?_

She hadn't been able to bear it.

* * *

><p>Because what he <em>hadn't<em> told them was that the IVS had never sent the final formula. Just like Jenner had said, they'd been the closest to a cure, a solution, something they could use to get a leg up on the infection and set the world back to rights again. Out of everyone, they'd been the ones making the real breakthroughs.

Eugene's people had received every last scrap of data.

Everything but the one thing they'd actually needed.

Maybe they'd never gotten it.

Maybe they'd never sent it.

Or maybe France had lost power and gone up before they could figure it out for themselves.

The truth was, they'd probably never know.

All they did was that whoever had sent out the final transmission had typed out a single word. Something that was repeated, over and over, before cutting off in mid-transmission. Something that made her picture fire on fire and a man hunched over a computer, watching his hand turn to ash in front of him.

_Jugement._

_Jugement._

_Jugement._

_Jugeme-_

* * *

><p>He'd had to guess.<p>

_He'd guessed wrong._

* * *

><p><span><strong>AN #2:** Thank you for reading. Reviews and constructive critiquing are love! – There will be more to come, stay tuned!

**Reference: **

* Due to the computer system being damaged, Eugene's efforts to make the 'cure' delivery system work results in having to physically interact with the main computer system, however due to the damage sustained previous to their arrival, when activated, this system basically starts melting down (giving them only shot at delivering the cure and in the process, releases highly toxic vapors/gases which are fatal) Eugene knew this and sacrificed himself in an attempt to get this 'cure' out there. Side note: The problem with the high toxic vapor is real. It is why we have e-waste centers to deal with electronic waste in real life. Essentially it burns out your lungs and you die, so yeah, not exactly fun-town.

* IVS: Is the French equivalent of the American CDC. Full name: Institut De Veille Sanitaire

* _"Jugement"_ – is the word "judgement" in French.

* Big thank you to gunslingerdixon for her tireless help in collecting the quotes I needed for this story. Seriously though, I message her at all hours with ridiculously long requests for quotes and she is like my own personal superwoman, no joke. Go check her out on tumblr!


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** I don't own AMC's The Walking Dead or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside.

**Authors Note #1:** Because it has been a while since I have attempted to purposely ruin everyone's feelings, okay?

**Warnings:** *Contains: adult language, adult content, character death, angst, season five spoilers, reference to the usual emotional trauma, angst, and unexpected bonding along the way.

**Forever (is a limited time offer)**

_**Chapter Three**_

"_Me and Sophia stayed at that shelter for a day and a half before I went back to Ed. I went home, I got beat up, life went on, and I just kept praying for something to happen. But I didn't do anything. Not a damn thing. Who I was with him… she got burned away. And I was happy about that. I mean, not happy, but… And at the prison I got to be who I always thought I should be, thought I should've been. And then she got burned away. Everything now just… consumes you."_

* * *

><p>Abraham had believed it would work long after they packed their things and started scavenging for supplies for the trip back to Georgia. Everyone else lost it eventually – lost hope – giving up as the days trickled past and the walkers showed no sign they'd been affected by whatever solution Eugene had released into the air. But he'd clung onto that belief fiercely, even after they found him, half drowned in a pool of his own red – the still forms of Rosita and Tara tucked gently into his side.<p>

"Just wait," he'd urged, punctured lungs straining, frothing – painted with a thin lattice of crimson that flooded fresh across his lips every other breath. "You'll see – just wait."

They buried them at dawn. Beside the lonely spit of broken earth that marked where they'd put Eugene to rest only a few weeks before. Four identical graves in the overgrown patch of green that faced out towards the sea.

They mourned.

But they didn't wait.

* * *

><p>They left Washington and its false hope behind.<p>

Taking the back roads until the line of tension in Daryl's shoulders finally started to relax. Breathing easy for what felt like the first time in over two months as the familiar sights and sounds of a blushing Georgian fall ruffled through her hair. They left the city scape behind, grateful to be free, jammed into the back of the cube van Michonne and Glenn had found in a parking garage a few blocks from Eugene's underground complex.

They didn't find out until later, until they'd lost the others - one by one - that the rot had followed them home.

* * *

><p>She didn't like to think about it.<p>

She didn't _let _herself think about it.

But sometimes she did.

Sometimes she couldn't help it.

It was the little things, mostly. That snuck up on her every now and again.

The little things that cut the deepest.

That cored her out bit by bit until she couldn't help but wonder if she was just as empty inside as she was outside. A shell of stress fractures and faded fabric that had no business calling itself a human being.

Things like the reflection of flames – dancing high and angry - in the back of Father Gabriel's eyes when Maggie's hands slipped on the rope and sent them pitching headfirst into the black.

Things like the last time she'd heard Judith laugh.

And the first and last time she'd heard of that terrible, warbling little scream.

Things like Carl's hat tangled in the long grass. Seeing Lori staring back at her as he took his last breath cradled in her arms. Her heart breaking when he was able to muster the smallest of smiles when she told him to be brave.

Things like Rick and Daryl fighting back to back – lighting up the night with muzzle-flashes and wordless screams as the three of them tried to lead a herd away from camp.

Things like how they'd never found Michonne's and Sasha's bodies.

Things like the teeth marks set in red, high on Rick's right thigh.

Things like how he'd called out for her - for Lori, Carl, even Shane - as the fever slowly took him from them.

Things like how she'd pressed a kiss into his skin. Smoothing the hair on his temple as her eyes blurred and she lied without regret. Letting him everything Lori had never gotten the chance to say.

Things like the delicate tinge of blue of Glenn's skin when they'd found him cold one morning.

Things like the way Daryl's knuckles cracked when he unscrewed the silencer on Glenn's Glock and hurled it into the woods. Voice hoarse, hiccupping around a bitter, angry little sob before he slammed his fist so hard into the bend of a tree that she was able to count each and every finger she'd later have to splint.

Things like how it'd felt when they'd looked up one day and realized they were alone.

That out of everyone, they were the ones standing.

* * *

><p>They were all ghosts now.<p>

Individual jumbles of hollowed out skin and yellowing porcelain.

Paper thin scrapes of humanity that didn't have the decency to know when they'd over stayed their welcome.

But like she said, she didn't like to think about it.

* * *

><p><span><strong>AN #2:** Thank you for reading. Reviews and constructive critiquing are love! – One more chapter and this story will be complete! Stay tuned. Sorry about the short chapter, this was more transitional than anything and didn't fit in either the second or last chapter.

**Reference: **

*Big thank you to gunslingerdixon for the help collecting the quotes used in this story.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** I don't own AMC's The Walking Dead or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside.

**Authors Note #1:** Because it has been a while since I have attempted to purposely ruin everyone's feelings, okay?

**Warnings:** *Contains: adult language, adult content, character death, angst, season five spoilers, reference to the usual emotional trauma, hurt and comfort, clear references and allusions to suicide, depression, emotional and mental dissonance and possible symptoms of mental illness.

**Forever (is a limited time offer)**

_**Chapter Four**_

"_Don't worry she'll come back. I didn't hurt her brain. No, no, no! We have to wait. I need to show you. You'll see. You'll finally get it. We have to wait. I just want us to wait. But Judith can change, too. I was just about to—"_

* * *

><p>She leaned back on her elbows, bruised joints softened by the mossy shingles as she watched dawn break over the horizon. And just like it always did, the deep summer sun rose over head and left her cold.<p>

She hadn't been truly warm since the day they'd left for Washington.

She hummed quietly to herself. Feet kicking out over the roof with soft rhythmic thuds. Opening her eyes a fraction of an inch at a time as the light advanced on the shadow. Pearling across the crumbling slate and broken up gravel as she watched the world wake up. Daryl for his part, said nothing. Watching her, quiet as anything from the long grass below, eyes tracking the swinging feet that were just a few inches out of reach.

_He knew better than to try. _

_He never had. _

_Not once. _

_He wasn't like that. _

_Like them._

_He was better._

_Hers._

She didn't realize she'd said it all out loud until she noticed he'd shuffled a couple inches closer to the side of the building. Looking up at her in that way he always did, eyes veiled behind pearlish-opaque. An unwelcome stupor of the brilliant blue that had once existed in its place.

The splits in her lips cracked as she worried them, flinging pain down already sore nerve endings. She sighed. She'd been pushing herself too hard. Always moving. Always running. Always one step ahead. At first she'd been running from him. Trying to get enough distance between them. But he never lost interest. He never stopped coming. Even when she covered her scent. Even when she found a car and gunned it for as long and as far as she could, he always found her. Following her around, mile after mile, like a dog she didn't have it in her to truly tame. He was always there. Waiting._ Close._

Weeks passed like that.

Trickling down into months.

And here they were.

She wrinkled her nose as the wind shifted, offending her senses with the contents of the stainless steel bowl at her side. Stinking of iron and old blood.

Below her, Daryl scented the air, excited.

_He remembered this part._

_He knew what happened if he was good._

The tang of bloody iron and rusting metal rose as she gave in and pulled the bowl into her lap. It didn't bother her like it used to. The smell. The first time she'd lost it, gagging as she upended the bowl out the second story window of the house she'd taken shelter in for the night.

She was better at it now.

_Practiced._

Good enough that she reached into the bowl and plucked out a fatty looking cut, rank and still dripping with the red-raw of freshly butchered rabbit. Letting crimson rivulets weave criss-crosses down the inside of her wrists and forearms as he reached up below her, vocal and greedy.

She raised a brow as his mouth opened and closed.

"Wouldn't do to let you starve I suppose."

* * *

><p>"Do it," he rasped, pleading now as a red tide welled up, slipping out from the corners of his lips like a basin cracked along the rim. Ivory-starved and achingly beautiful. "Carol, C-Carol…please…"<p>

"I will. I will," she whispered, trying to distract him as she pressed a kiss into his sweaty fringe. Cleaning the blood off his face with a gentleness that forced purpose into her shaking fingers, before she grabbed a bunch of rags and balled them together, pressing them against the ragged hole the walkers had ripped into his side.

She kissed him again - forehead, cheek, nose, lips – as he struggled to lift his knife, to work the muscles in his arm that were starting to fail, expression pale and clouded as red flowed through the spaces between her fingers.

"I will," she murmured again, vision blurring over as he stopped fighting, soaking her in as his muscles slackened – trusting and full – as he looked up at her. The last thing he'd ever see as the light shining behind his eyes slowly dimmed. "…Daryl?"

It wasn't the first lie she'd ever told.

But it was the one that'd cut the deepest.

"_Everything has a way of working itself out in the end, you'll see."_

* * *

><p>"I'm getting better with the bow," she added, almost conversationally, pretending that there had been words that had come before as she watched him wobble off to the side, filthy hands grabbing at the meat she'd tossed before levering himself up again. Joints stiffening as the freshness of death started to leave them.<p>

_She tried not to look._

_Daryl had never appreciated an audience to his vulnerabilities._

Blood-stained ivory flashed in the rising light as he gulped, growling and snapping as he swallowed the rest whole. She clutched the bowl to her chest, boots tangling with the edge of the gutter, rocking slightly. Trying to remind herself that he'd always been like this. That he'd always loved her cooking, bashfully asking for seconds even back at the quarry camp.

"You can chew you know," she told him, tone edgy and hinging on sarcastic as she peered over the rain-gutter. "No one is going to take it from you."

She mistook the tear tracks for sweat as she wiped her sleeve across her forehead, waiting for a handful of beats before she tossed him another chunk. But he just blinked up at her, docile and still, polite as usual as his shuffling feet scuffed at the muddy grass until something in her caved and she reached for another piece.

_It wasn't polite to completely monopolize the conversation, after all._

* * *

><p>She wasn't consciously aware of where she was going until she came bumper to bumper with her old station wagon. She let the jeep she'd hot-wired creep to a stop, resting her head on the steering wheel as the reality of her situation hit her right in the center of the chest.<p>

_She was coming back around._

_Completing the circle._

_Running all the way back to the place it had all started._

She made herself look at it, taking in the filthy windshield, the fading finish. The way the words she'd painted on the glass had been completely washed away. Someone had gone through it. Rifling around in the trunk, the contents of Ed's crappy old toolbox strewn across the blacktop, drowning in rust. The food they'd left on the hood was gone, so was the blanket.

At least someone had gotten some use out of them.

For some reason, the thought didn't make her feel any better.

It just made her tired.

She found herself scanning the road behind her as she slowly backed up. Watching for him instinctively as she forced the wheel into a sharp, groaning turn. Her eyes flickered to the side mirror, expression unreadable as she scraped a deliberate line across the paint job of her old car. Not like Ed had ever given a crap about it other than to curse up a storm whenever it broke down. He'd poured everything they had into that stupid truck of his and he'd ended up crashing it driving home from the bar a week before they ended up getting evacuated. The irony had been staggering.

The fingers of her free hand patted the Glock tucked into the v of her legs reassuringly as she coasted between the wrecks. Counting the side roads as she made her way through the traffic snarl and tried to remember how to breathe.

He'd be coming now.

Any minute.

He never let her get too far ahead.

In fact, she was counting on it.

It was easy to figure out the ending now that she knew where she was heading.

* * *

><p>She was standing above the lonely line of graves when he staggered out of the treeline. Vest flapping limply in the breeze as his swinging hands – bloody and crusted – whispered across the tops of fallow wheat and sweet grass long since gone to seed.<p>

Her smile was small, scarred and lonely on her face as she turned back to her silent reverie. Content with the knowledge that he was close by as he bumped against the fence that spanned the length of the long dirt road they'd escaped down all those years ago.

The air had been different then, choking like an oil-slick as the barn burned. There was nothing left of it now, just a pile of rubble beside the hollowed out skeleton of Dale's old RV. She had been so frightened, so full of fear as she'd ran through those fields, separated from the others. Carrying the guilt of it, of Andrea, deep in her chest as she stumbled, twisting her ankle in a fox-hole but having no choice but to keep going.

Because they didn't stop. They kept coming and coming and-

_But then he found her._

_Riding in like he'd been waiting for her call._

_Saving her._

_Just like he always did._

_Just like he'd do again._

She sucked in a breath, hugging herself as he approached, all husky breaths and an expression she knew better than her own – a confused sort of blankness that never failed to cut deep whenever she forced herself to look back at him.

"I am done running," she said softly, turning just as he shuffled to a stop. Standing like the odd man out on the other side of her little girl's grave. Limbs jerky and eager, but still prone to that same familiar uncertainty.

She breathed out, smile shaky as she took the first step, then another. Broaching the space between them until there was no where left to go but into each other's arms.

"Shhhh, it's alright. I have you, it's okay," she murmured, pulling him in until his head was resting against her shoulder. So similar to that moment after Terminus when he'd pulled her in - resting his head against her breast as his face had said far more than either of them had counted on - that she felt the afterimage curl across her tongue.

She couldn't help the tears that came then.

They weren't tears of joy or pain.

Those had been shed and dried a long time ago.

But rather, relief.

_Because it was finally over._

_It was done._

The bite, when it came, was so inappropriately gentle that save for the lancing sting of his teeth settling deep into the curve of her throat, she might have mistaken it for a kiss.

She sighed, wilting into it, gentling her hands through his hair as he growled and crushed her close. Closing her eyes as some distant part of her fell still.

Because really, all else considered, the thrumming warmth that followed - a sound accompaniment to tearing flesh and trickling red - was a gift she hadn't expected.

_Maybe Lizzie had been right. _

_Maybe it was time to change._

* * *

><p><span><strong>AN #2:** Thank you for reading. Reviews and constructive critiquing are love! Sorry about the long wait, I got distracted by other things and kind of lost the inspiration for this story until the past week or so. This last chapter was a bit difficult to write. – This story is now complete. Oh god, I am so sorry about this.

**Reference: **

*Big thank you to gunslingerdixon for the help collecting the Lizzie/Carol/Eugene/etc quotes from season four/five for use in this story.


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